


Meeting Nick Valentine... Again

by welseykels



Series: Fallout 4: Charlotte Walsh [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 10:49:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6607855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/welseykels/pseuds/welseykels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlotte Walsh thought it was only a coincidence that Diamond City’s detective bore the same name as her old friend from before the war.  How wrong she was.  Contains spoilers about Nick’s personal quest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meeting Nick Valentine... Again

**Author's Note:**

> [Check out my writing masterpage on tumblr!](https://welseykels.tumblr.com/writing)

It’s been a bittersweet amusement to her as she works her way through the Vault with MacCready.  She doesn’t know how Nicky would have thought of some detective taking his name over two-hundred years after the bombs, but she likes to think that he would have gotten a kick out of it.  She can almost hear him say ‘ _ at least they have some taste in inspirational figures _ ’.  

She tries to hold back a half-laugh half-sob when she hears the other Nick Valentine’s voice for the first time - taunting one of Skinny Malone’s men - as they enter what seems to be the last room in the Vault.  His voice sounds nearly the same as her old friend.  For a moment, little snatches of memories overwhelm her: the smirk he’d give her whenever he found out some information she needed for one of her clients or the double-date nights with Nate and... she has to fight back her vision from clouding when she thinks of the nights after Jennifer was taken from them - from Nick - with a single bullet.  He’d stayed with them for weeks after, Nate sharing a whiskey on the couch with him once her belly started to swell and she couldn’t, the pair helping the private eye get back on his feet when all he wanted to do was run straight to Eddie Winter with a gun blazing and a certain death.  Death came for him too quickly after with the bombs instead.

The man guarding Valentine is down before he even realizes they’re there, MacCready showing off the skills he’d told her about when she’d hired him back at the Third Rail all those weeks ago.  He shoots her a cocky grin before they move forward, the ex-gunner opting to search the guy for anything they can use, while she peers through the small window to the small office.

“Hey, you.  I don’t know who you are, but we got three minutes before they realize muscles-for-brains ain’t coming back.  Get this door open.”  The voice is still too close and she bites back the snark she would have given to the old Nick.  Instead, she moves to the terminal beside the door, finding unlocking it to be simple work.  The sound of the door opening hits her before she even turns towards it - towards the room’s occupant.

“Gotta love the irony of the reverse damsel-in-distress scenario.  Question is, why did our heroine risk life and limb for an old private eye?”  Detective Valentine’s busy lighting up a cigarette, back still partly to her as he does so.  But then he turns, jaw going slack as his - glowing - eyes dart across her face.  The cigarette nearly falls out of his mouth when it falls open.  “Charlie?”

It’s Nick, but it’s not; where there once was skin and scruff, there’s tears that allow her to see the machinery beneath.  Her words are tumbling out of her mouth before she can even pull enough presence of thought together to stop them.  “What… are you?”

He frowns - that same goddamn frown she’s known for most of her life - and she knows it’s him then.  Her heart breaks when she thinks that those were the first words she’d said.  

“I know the skin and the metal parts ain’t comforting, but it’s not important right now.”

She closes the gap between them, hands hesitating in the air before his face, not knowing whether she should brush her fingers against his still existing cheek.  He decides for her, wrapping metallic fingers over her own and guiding them there.  His other hand brushes against her own cheek, yellow eyes scanning over every inch of her.  “Is it really you? Or are you a synth too?  How did you...”

This can’t be happening.  Nick Valentine must have died… but how does this… this man exist?  And then she remembers a discussion between Nate and Nick one night - far into the bottle of Irish Whiskey - where Nick was debating about having scientists at C.I.T. probe and copy his memories for some sort of tests they were doing.  And then it starts to make sense why he’s still around too.

“The Vault we got into… they lied and they froze us, I just… I just thawed out a few months ago.”

“Oh, Charlie.  Oh, I’m so sorry.”  His hand leaves her just a moment before she’s being pulled into his arms before she can protest. He sighs, and then they stay silent for a few moments.  “The only thing that matters is why you went to all this trouble to cut me loose, if you didn’t know it was me.”

“I need you to find someone, but it’s… complicated.  I don’t exactly know where they could be, or how long they’ve been gone.  Nicky, it’s Shaun.”

“Shaun, as in your son Shaun?”

“Yeah.”  And then his hands grip tighter around her waist, and she can feel the tears run down her face to fall onto his coat.  “They took him and Nate, he - they killed him.”

She feels the hand that’s still covered with skin brush against the hair at the nape of her neck, fingers slowly winding into the strands of hair there as his other hand rubs lines down her lower back.  It’s something she knows - a gesture from before Nate and Jennifer, from when it was just Nicky and Charlie against the world.  It’s too familiar - too intimate - after all these years, after marriages and engagements and children, and now under the heavy weight of the green hat that doesn’t really belong to her yet as it sits on her head with two bullets in the band.  But she lets it happen, leans further into his embrace as he softly speaks his condolences to her.

“Look, I don’t mean to interrupt whatever the fu- heck this is, but we’ve gotta get moving.”  MacCready’s voice is strained as she pulls away, but Nick’s hand still stays at her back for a moment longer, metal fingers digging slightly into the fabric as if he’s trying to use her to ground himself.

And then they’re running as fast as they can.


End file.
